Sabres over MiG Alley: The F-86 and the Battle for Air Superiority in Korea (review)

With this book, airpower historian Kenneth Werrell aims to do for the F-86 Sabre what he did for the B-29 Superfortress in Blankets of Fire: U.S. Bombers Over Japan in World War II—create the best one-volume study of the aircraft's development and first wartime employment. Despite the hype on the book jacket, he does not quite achieve that same high standard with this effort, but it does make a valuable contribution to literature about the Korean Air War and its star aircraft.

Werrell begins with a superb description of the testing and development of the Sabre, including thorough discussions of its flaws. It is amazing that the pioneering jet airplane was so successful considering its many technical problems, especially with guns and gunsights. The Sabre's fine combat record is a tribute to the well-trained and aggressive pilots who flew it. Werrell corresponded with or interviewed sixty of those flyers, and their unique stories considerably enrich his narrative. The author devotes most of his attention to those pilots who achieved the status of "ace," but he does cover a variety of other issues in less detail. These topics include exchange pilots from other services, air-sea rescue, American forays over the Yalu into China, and a brief overview of the whole air war. Werrell also provides a brief, but unsatisfying, discussion of the widely varying American, Soviet, and Chinese combat claims. He describes the parallel development of the MiG-15, and some of the Soviet aces who flew that excellent aircraft. The lighter Soviet jet outperformed the Sabre in acceleration, rate of climb, and ceiling, but the MiG was less sophisticated, with numerous technical deficiencies. A North Korean defector who flew both jets compared the F-86 to a Cadillac and the MiG-15 to a Chevrolet.

The book is very reasonably priced, but also relatively short with large print. Readers will complete many sections wishing they were longer, with more detail. Werrell would have profited greatly by referring to Mark O'Neill's research in the Russian archives about their aerial intervention in Korea, and shies away from any analysis of the Sabre's less successful employment as a fighter-bomber. But aircraft buffs and readers interested in the Korean War or the early days of jet combat will learn much from this work.